Lyra made it home around mid afternoon. She was still shaking from her encounter with the brown dragon. She had heard of dragons trying to trick humans into putting down their weapons, or even going into their lair with them, but this one seemed almost… genuine? It couldn’t be. Everybody knew that dragons were ruthless killers, he must have been trying to get her to drop her guard. But why did it just fly away then? So many questions, and yet so few answers.
Lyra lived in a middle class home near the center of Torrine, a decent sized town, but still small enough that almost everybody knew each other. She was an only child and her parents were very protective. Her father was the captain of the guard, as was his father, and his father’s father. Needless to say she had grown up surrounded by weapons and combat training. Her parents wanted a son more than anything, but unfortunately they had her. Her mother was unable to have another child, and ever since she was born she had been trying to live up to her parents’ expectations. It wasn’t easy.
Lyra slowly opened the back door which let out a small creak that sounded louder than a dragon’s roar to Lyra, who was trying to get in unnoticed. She set her weapons by the door and tried her best to keep quiet as she took off her boots. Her mother had a very strict no weapons or boots in the house rule, one that she took very seriously. Practically the whole town knew how fierce Adaline could be when something riled her up. People say this is why Larun, Lyra’s father, married her. Larun was a fire user, and elements usually stuck together when it came to courting. It was frowned upon in higher up societies to court outside of your element. In Torrine people were free to do as they pleased when it came to romance, but people still tended to end up with those that used the same element as them.
Adaline, while an earth user, had the same fiery spirit that so many fire users possessed. Lyra was almost a perfect copy of her mother which caused many shouting matches to ensue. Lyra absolutely hated being told what to do, which is why she so often took off for days at a time to go exploring. It was forbidden by her parents to go off alone, it wasn’t safe and she could be seriously hurt, or so her parents said. Needless to say, she would never tell them of her experience with the brown dragon. She would get locked up in her room never to see the light of day again if they knew how close she had come to being dragon food.
As Lyra was about to sneak upstairs to her room, she heard a cough come from behind her. Her heart sank deep into her stomach and she turned around slowly, expecting the worst. Her fears were confirmed. Her mother had heard her come in, more likely she had felt her vibrations through the earth. She still hadn’t figured out how to hide that yet. She kept her eyes down, waiting for the verbal lashing to ensue.
“I’m disappointed in you Lyra.” Ouch, that one kind of hurt. She liked it better when she yelled. It was easier when they both just shouted at each other, that way she could yell back. When she was yelling she could sometimes convince herself that she was right, even when she knew she was partly in the wrong. But only partly.
“You were gone for days Lyra, days! Don’t you realize what that does to me? I didn’t sleep at all while you were gone, not one night! You could have been dead for all I knew!”
There it was, now she was yelling. Yelling was good, yelling was normal. It was hard when she was actually expected to reply, there was really nothing to say. She knew what her mother wanted her to say, so she would go along with it, hopefully it would help this conversation end faster so she could go to bed. She couldn’t just leave though, that’s what she did last time and she was just getting back from that little trip.
“I’m sorry mom, you’re right. I shouldn’t have left.” She kept her head down
“For the Earth Mother’s sake Lyra!” she cursed “I don’t know what to do with you! You can’t just do whatever you want whenever you want. You always talk about how you are old enough for real responsibilities, but your actions tell me otherwise.”
“I wouldn’t know what to do with me either, I’d probably just send me away.” This was another topic they would fight about constantly. Lyra wanted to get sent away, she wanted to join the dragon corps. The dragon corps was a group of elite warriors and mages that spent their time tracking down and killing any dragons that ventured too close to any settlements. For the most part, dragons kept to themselves, but occasionally one would wander too close to a town and start to prey on innocent farmers and defenseless citizens. Lyra wanted to join up. There was an incredibly difficult training regimen and selection process, people died every year. Lyra was desperate to try.
Every year representatives would be sent from the capital to recruit those from surrounding towns and villages. It was at a different time every year, they didn’t want people to be able to prepare too much. Those in the dragon corps have to be able to leave at a moment's notice, and they like to train unpredictability as soon as they possibly can. They would then travel back to the capital and the training would begin. Every year rumors of deaths would make their way back to their town, but Lyra was pretty sure that those were just made up to scare people.
“Enough! Just… enough” Adaline said wearily. “I’ll have no more talk of you leaving, you are just too young. I’ll speak to your father about what to do with you when he gets home, until then go to your room.”
“Forget it” Lyra said, pushing past her mom “I’ll be back in a couple hours when dad gets back” and she walked out the door she had just entered minutes ago, grabbing her weapons on her way out.
“Kai! Psst!” Lyra hissed up at the window. She waited for a few seconds, then grabbed a scoop of dirt from the ground. She held it in her hands and concentrated, it slowly turned into the shape of her hand. She set it on the ground and took a step back. Lifting her own right hand, the dirt hand started to copy her. It began to crawl forward as she wiggled her fingers back and forth, and eventually it made its way up the brick wall. Once it reached the window on the second story it balanced on the edge and made a fist. It made a loud knocking sound rap rap!
“Oh hell” Lyra cursed, she hadn't wanted it to be that loud. She tried again, this time with better results.
The window slowly opened, knocking the earthen hand to the ground where it turned into a pile of dust that slowly dissipated. Immediately Lyra felt a wave of exhaustion envelope her, these things always took a lot out of her
“What are you doing out here? You haven’t been around in ages!”
A sandy haired head poked out of the window looking down at her. Lyra looked up at Kai with a wide grin on her face. Kai was a fire user, and her best friend, he never failed to make her smile. Unfortunately his parents didn’t have the greatest opinion of Lyra, she didn’t blame them one bit, and therefore they couldn’t spend too much time together. And whatever time they did spend together usually had to be done in secret.
“Give me one second” he whispered to her “I’ll be down in a flash.” His head disappeared from view. True to his word, in less than a minute he was outside next to her.
“What’s up?” He asked, “I feel like I haven’t seen you in a few days.” They started walking away from his house, down a familiar path to the edge of the town.
“That’s because you haven’t seen me in awhile, I just got back from a little trip.”
Kai frowned, “A trip? You went out beyond the walls alone again? I like adventure as much as the next person, but you should really be careful Lyra. You could get yourself killed out there.”
That wasn’t entirely true, Lyra thought. The part about possibly getting killed, yeah okay maybe that’s true. Not the part about Kai liking adventure as much as the next person. She remembered many times growing up that she had to practically drag him to do anything outside the village walls. He was a very… careful human being. Not only that, but his parents were even worse. They were constantly asking him where he was going, what he was doing, if was going to be back by dark, if he ate enough blah blah blah. Lyra didn’t have the best relationship with her parents, but if she had to go through what Kai went through on a daily basis, she would bury herself.
“Funny you should mention that, because you’re not gonna believe what happened this time.” She waited until they finally got to their spot at the edge of town. There was a nice grassy hill where they could look down at the rest of town. There were also a few trees that they used to climb in until the darkness made it impossible to see anything. Now it’s where they went to talk away from the ears of their parents. Lyra also liked to practice archery here, she would set up dead branches against tree trunks or prop up the occasional log, sometimes even throw a rope with a bucket attached to it over a branch. As she was setting up her targets she explained what she had encountered to Kai.
The best thing about Kai was that he was a great listener. Throughout the whole story he kept his mouth shut, but you could tell from his facial expressions that he had much to say. Lyra finished telling her run in with the dragon.
“Well? What do you think?” She said with a satisfied grin.
“What do I think? I think you’re crazy!” Kai exclaimed. “Not only was that totally dangerous, but you could have died!”
“You know, Kai, I’m no genius but I’m pretty sure that’s what ‘totally dangerous' means.”
Kai shoved her “You know what I mean. You’ve done some dangerous stuff before, but this time was, like, actually dangerous.”
“Yeah I know, it was just so weird though. It didn’t really feel that dangerous, the dragon never attacked. It just spoke, isn’t that super strange to you?”
Nodding slowly Kai agreed, “Yeah, that is weird. I still think that it was trying to lure you somewhere, but I don’t know why it didn’t just kill you when it was obvious that you weren’t going to go with it. Also, what the hell is a brown dragon doing this far south?”
Lyra was wondering the same thing. She hadn’t realized it at the moment because she had much more pressing matters to worry about at the time. However, the days following the encounter, she realized that it was pretty strange to see a brown dragon this close to Torrine.
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Torrine was a medium sized town in the southern part of Arulea. Dragons were usually pretty solitary creatures, but they liked their climates. In the south of Arulea one almost only saw red dragons. It was hot here, the winters were mild, and off the southern coast of Arulea were volcanic islands. These islands were inhabited solely by red dragons with many more living inland some ways. On the eastern side of Arulea is a dense forest where brown dragons lived. They liked the earth and the trees. Brown dragons also enjoy inhabiting mountains, and further north there was a mountain range where some reside.
Torrine was many leagues away from the eastern forest. Of course brown dragons have wandered this way in the past, but it was not common. This plus the fact that the dragon was just acting well, weird, really made Lyra think.
On the western border there was the land Teshon, which was a very flat country with many great plains. It was there that the white dragons resided. White dragons had power over air and were incredibly fast. Some say the only time you actually see a white dragon is right before it eats you. White dragons were too quick to be seen unless they wanted to be seen, or so the stories say.
And in the north was a country that bordered both Teshon and Arulea. Eshana was a wild country filled with wild people. The winters were long and the summers were short and much of the year was filled with snow and ice. Blue dragons thrived there. With their control of water they could make their caves out of ice or lie dormant for months at a time at the bottom of frozen lakes. The Starlit mountains created a natural border between Teshon and the other two countries, stretching from the east coast to the west. Eshana would trade goods with the other two countries, but very few made the dangerous trip through the mountains. Dragons of all sorts lived in the mountains, not to mention thieves and bandits as well. Some people enjoyed the wild country, but for most it was best to stay clear of Eshana.
“I was thinking,” Lyra said slowly.
“Oh no no no” interrupted Kai quickly. “Nothing good has ever come from you saying those words. Thinking is dangerous for you.” He paused for a second, then sighed, “Not thinking is probably even more dangerous for you, and then for me as well for associating with you. What is it then? What’s the terrible plan?”
Lyra grinned as she drew back her longbow, aiming at one of the targets. It was slowly moving in the wind, making it a difficult shot. She took a deep breath in… and released.
She cursed under her breath as her arrow just missed the mark, burying itself in a tree a few paces back. She turned to look at Kai.
“I say we go look for the dragon.”
At first what she said didn’t register with Kai, then it hit him. “You want to do what?” Fire threatened to burst out of his hands. He quickly patted his hands on the ground to put out the sparks then looked at Lyra.
“Are you crazy?” he asked. “Do you actually want to die? Because that’s what's going to happen if you go back looking for that dragon.” He then started to do an exaggerated impression of Lyra.
“Oh look at me, my name’s Lyra. I didn’t get eaten by a dragon by some miracle, so now I’m going back to look for that same dragon to give it another try! Turns out I just hate life.” He finished with a glance in her direction. “Did that sound about right?”
“If you do that again I will put you on a pillar of earth so high in the sky nothing is gonna save you,” she said over Kai’s laughter. Even Lyra couldn’t help but chuckle along with Kai's infectious laughter.
“I’m serious Kai, I really think we should find this dragon. It totally had me, there was nothing I could do to escape it, and it just let me go.”
Kai nodded seriously, “And I say we take it as the miracle it is and you never go out alone again. No, I’m serious Lyra,” he spoke over her protests. “I can’t let you just go kill yourself looking for a stupid dragon. You’re my only friend and I can’t deal with this armpit of a town alone, alright? Promise me you won’t go out there looking for it. Promise me you won’t go out alone again.”
Lyra was a little taken aback at his seriousness. He often talked about how much he disliked Torrine, but he never mentioned that she was his only friend. It touched her, and made her think of how she had rewarded his friendship. Mostly with constant worrying and disappearing, she felt a little bad.
“Okay, you’re right” she relented “I won’t go looking for that dragon, I promise.”
“And?” Kai prompted.
“And… I won’t go out there alone anymore. I’ll drag you along with me if need be.”
“That’s better,” Kai smiled. “Now, let's finish up your archery practice and get back before the sun completely goes down.”
When Lyra got home, her mother and her father were in the kitchen talking in hushed tones. Lyra loved her father, she dreamed of being like him one day. Strong, respected, and fearless, people looked up to him. He was the captain of the guard for their town and people trusted him to keep them safe. He encouraged Lyra to learn to fight while her mother wanted her to learn tasks more suited for a woman, like cooking and sewing. Lyra was terrible at cooking, nothing ever turned out how it was supposed to. Kai was even better at cooking than she was somehow.
“Lyra, welcome back. How was your evening?” Her father was looking at her with a slightly strained expression on his face. She couldn’t quite place what it was, but it was not the usual carefree expression he always wore. Her mother was staring at the floor quietly, which was odd for Adaline. She was always so ‘in your face’ and was never lacking for words.
“Hey dad, um, I was just hanging out with Kai. We were over by the hill practicing archery.” She knew something was up, but didn’t know exactly what was going on. She decided to speak up, she never did like uncomfortable silences.
“So what’s going on?” She looked her father in the eyes. Her mother was still staring at the floor.
“Well, there really is no way to say this, but I deci-” he caught himself, “we decided that you are going to the Corps.” He waited for her to react.
“What are you talking about?” This was crazy. She had waited for this for as long as she could remember. And here it was, finally happening. This wasn’t right though, she hadn’t expected it to happen this easily. She thought she was going to have to run away to actually join the Corps.
“Just like I said, you’re joining the Corps. You leave tomorrow morning, so you better pack and get some sleep. They travel quickly and won’t slow down for anybody. “
Her mother was still just standing there, not saying a word. Lyra started to feel anxious. As much as she wanted to leave, she still loved her home here. Yes, she fought with her mother almost daily, but to leave? With only a few hours notice? She took a step towards her mom tentatively.
“Mom, I…” but her voice died off, she didn't know what to say. She was what, sorry? Sorry she was leaving to finally have a life and fulfill her dreams? Sorry she made life incredibly difficult and didn’t want to be a “normal” girl? She didn’t know what to say, especially after she saw a tear rolling down her mother’s cheek.
“Don’t,” her mother whispered, “just don’t.” She kept her face hidden as she spun around and took off out the door, stifling a sob.
“You need to pack Lyra,” her father repeated. “It’s going to be a difficult journey. You pack and go to sleep, you can say your goodbyes in the morning. Your mother… she’ll be alright. She just needs some time.”
Lyra hoped her mother would be alright, or at least be able to say goodbye in the morning. Lyra really did love her mother, she was just a little too much sometimes.
She nodded to her father and made her way to her room. She slid the curtain shut behind her that divided her room from the rest of the house and sat on her bed. Almost immediately she jumped up. Kai! He was going to lose his mind when he found out. Then another sobering thought hit her. She might never see her best friend again. He would definitely never come with her, it was much too dangerous for him. His parents would also never allow it, they were even more careful than he was.
She carefully opened her window and slid into the outside air. She ran as quickly as she could to Kai’s house, anxiety building up in her stomach at how her best friend was going to react. When she reached his house she hesitated. She could just go back inside and pretend that she never had any time to come and tell him the news. It would be easier that way, she didn’t like goodbyes. She shook her head at herself. If the roles were reversed, Kai would have come straight to her to tell her goodbye. It didn’t matter how late it was and how little sleep he was going to get, he would have come to say goodbye. She sighed and tossed some pebbles up to his window. She didn’t have any energy to use earth anymore, it was too late in the evening and she was exhausted. After a couple pebbles Kai poked his head out the window.
“What is it this time?” he chuckled as he leaned out the window. “You miss me already?”
“Kai, I’m leaving in the morning, I’m going to join the Corps. They’re coming to pick me up in the morning and I don’t know when I’m coming back, or if I’ll ever come back.” It came out in a rush, she didn’t have time to waste.
“Whoa slow down there Lyra, what do you mean you’re joining the Corps? You mean the Corps? You’re actually doing this?” He whispered in disbelief.
“Yes, this is actually happening!” She had so many mixed emotions. She didn’t want to be too excited because it would mean her leaving for good, but this is what she always wanted, wasn’t it?
Kai stared at her for a moment longer, then disappeared back into his room. After only a minute he came tip toeing out the door, silently closing it behind him. He walked up to Lyra and stopped short when he got to her.
“Well,” he said only a little awkwardly, “I guess this is it then.” Suddenly he threw his arms around Lyra.
Lyra didn’t know what to do. After a second, she hugged him back. They had been friends for as long as she could remember, but they had never shown any kind of affection to each other. She appreciatedthough, she needed this kind of support because she suspected this would be the last time she received it for a very long time.
“Come with me” she said suddenly, “it’ll be an adventure, like we always talked about.”
He laughed at that, “Lyra you know I would actually die out there.” His face went serious, “and you might too if you don’t be careful. I need you to stay safe, you have to make it back here alright? People die in the selection process all the time. I was talking to this guard who said about four in ten people die, and another one in ten just leave. You can’t die, promise me that right now.”
Lyra was shocked, how had she never heard of this? She knew it was rigorous, but people actually died? She thought those were just rumors.
“I- I promise I won’t die. I’m going to make it back here, and I will see you again.” At that moment she started to doubt herself, maybe she’ll just tell her father she won’t go. Thinking about how that conversation would go made her realize how awful that would be. She had been begging for this chance for years, she couldn’t back down now. She wouldn’t be able to face her mother everyday, knowing that she turned down her only chance to leave this town, knowing that staying home would make her a coward.
“I need to go now,” she finally said. “I just wanted to tell you I was leaving tomorrow, that’s all.” She hated this, saying goodbye.
With one last hug she turned around and made her way back to her home. She needed to pack and rest. It sounded like tomorrow was going to be rough, and she was going to need all her strength.